By 11:45 on a Thursday night, the line outside the campus theater stretches past the fountain, students trading blankets and thermoses of coffee while a volunteer scans tickets at the door. Inside, every one of the 210 seats will be full before the projector rolls.
This is the midnight film series, revived this semester after a two-year pause that organizers attribute to pandemic-era budget cuts to student programming. Its return has been, by most measures available to the club running it, an unambiguous hit.
A format built for the format's own sake
The series' organizers are deliberate about what they screen: cult classics, midnight-movie staples, and the occasional new release chosen specifically for a rowdy, participatory crowd rather than a quiet arthouse audience.
"People aren't coming for a lecture on film history," said the series' student director. "They're coming because it's midnight, it's loud, and for two hours nobody's thinking about their thesis."